Albany doesn't work.
Three simple words, and yet they set off a roar loud as a hundred fighter jets in Ruth's mind. Dizzy, overwhelmed she spun away from him, grasping the railing with both hands, holding on for dear life as if the tumult inspired by Harry's declaration would be sufficient to send her hurtling from the bridge to the dark sparkling water below. How could it be, she asked herself desperately as her whole body trembled and she blinked back tears, that she could have spent the last year or more sunk in a fog of terror, convinced that the very world stood on the brink of disaster for her sake? How could it be that Harry, Harry who loved her, who had proposed marriage to her, who had traded his honor for her life could have lied to her about something so vital, so momentous?
Rage and relief tore at her, left her spinning and breathless. She wanted to strike his face and curse him for betraying her trust, wanted to fling her arms around his neck and thank him for removing this burden she had carried for so long now, and in the moment she was not sure which impulse would win. Millions of people would not die for her sake, and for that she was grateful, but Harry had lied to her, and she could not reconcile his love of her, nor hers for him, with that bitter truth. Always it had been the lies Ruth hated most, the one thing about her life in the service that had been hardest to bear - well, after the loss of her friends, it had been perhaps the second hardest - and Harry knew that. His arms had been a haven for her, a place where she could rest secure in the knowledge that no matter what he said to anyone else, he would always tell her the truth. For so long knowing that Harry trusted her implicitly, above all others, had been her one comfort, the one reassurance that kept her in place upon the wall. And now that touchstone, that central fact of her life, had been turned on its ear.
Harry had lied.
"You lied to me," she breathed, hardly able to comprehend the words.
"I had no choice," he told her softly, reaching out to touch her with a gentle hand, but Ruth jerked away, breathing like a bellows.
"You had every choice," she hissed.
Three years earlier…
"I had no choice, Ruth," he said softly.
She stared at him, the slump of his shoulders, his ragged breathing, and tried very hard not to weep. She knew he meant it, knew he believed it, but she could not stand to hear those words from him, not now when her very soul lay cracked and bleeding.
They were standing together on a bridge overlooking the Thames, side-by-side and trying very hard not to look at one another. It was only a week, since George's death, since Ruth had been forced to send Nico home, and the grief she felt was all-consuming, bitter and black and inescapable. Perhaps it was madness, the way she clung to her sorrow, but she wanted to feel it, every ounce of pain and self-recrimination, for she knew from experience that feeling anything, even something as terrible as self-hatred, was better than feeling nothing at all. So long as she could still shed tears for the man she'd loved, the man who had died for the sake of that love, she knew that she was still human. More human than Harry and the rest of the spooks, she suspected, for they sloughed off such burdens as a duck might let water roll of its back, continued on as if nothing were amiss no matter how great a calamity they had faced. Or caused.
She wanted to hate Harry, in this moment. She wanted to hate him for confiding in her, for setting in motion the circumstances that had led them to this point, wanted to hate him for the choices he had made, the role he had played in turning her life upside down. She wanted to hate him for all that he was, for all that he had done, for the love he still bore her. It would have been so much easier, if only she could hate him.
And yet she could not. Though in some ways she blamed him, blamed him for not divulging his secrets to Mani, for not trying harder to save George's life, the part of her that would always be a spook knew better. There had been no other way; a load of weapons grade uranium and the lives if could take far outweighed one man, one child. Even her man, her child, were not worth more than the fate of thousands. Harry knew it, and Ruth did, too, no matter how her tattered, confused heart might try to ignore that fact.
On this day he had come to her, invited her for a walk knowing that she had not seen or spoken to anyone in days, that she did not leave the little flat he'd secured for her as often as an otherwise mentally stable woman would have done. He was trying, in his own way, to offer her comfort, to help her to heal. That was all well and good, she supposed; it was nice to stretch her legs, to breathe in the fresh air, to bask in the sounds of the city. What she could not abide, what caused her such grief, was the fact that he was also trying, in his way, to apologize to her. It was an apology she was not yet ready to hear.
I had no choice, he'd told her, and though perhaps he was right Ruth found that she still wanted to shout at him, to plead with him, to screech for all to hear that he'd had every choice. Her mind had been spinning for days now, asking the same questions over and over again, replaying the events that had torn her asunder and trying to locate the moment when it all went wrong. What else could he have done, under the circumstances? How could he have changed the course of their fate?
"Surely you can see that-"
"You could have sent them somewhere else," Ruth insisted suddenly. "You could have told them it was at Portman Down, or that you'd given it to the Americans, or that you'd stashed it under bloody Westminster. You could have sent them on a wild goose chase-"
"And they would have known I was lying at once, and god knows what they have done then."
He was right, damn him. Mani and his men had already searched the facility in Norfolk, perhaps they would have looked in any other logical place as well, and perhaps any attempt at obfuscation would only have made Mani cross, would only have sped up the inevitable violence he intended for them.
"You could have told him the truth, maybe Ros and Lucas-"
"Ros and Lucas had no idea where the uranium had been moved, and I would have had no way to warn them where Mani was headed," he pointed out. He was growing frustrated with her; she could hear it in his voice, see it in the set of his shoulders. "And besides, Ruth, you have to know Mani was not planning to let us walk away. Even if we'd told him the truth. I had to play for time, and I did the best I could."
And though she hated to admit it, though she wanted more than anything to go on arguing with him, Ruth knew that in that moment he was telling her the truth. There had been no other option, no other way to save them from calamity, and what Harry had done, smashing the laptop, letting Mani dangle until the last possible second, was the only course he could have taken, under the circumstances. Dimly she recalled the moments just before Lucas and his team had arrived and saved their skins; Harry had been about to say something else, about to try another tactic to save Nico's life. What would that have been, she asked herself now. How had he intended to save the day? Did it matter, really, now that the thing was done?
It matters to me, she thought.
"What would you have done, Harry?" she asked him softly. "If Mani had killed Nico, if Lucas hadn't arrived, if it was down to just you and me? What would you have done?"
For the first time since this conversation had begun she turned to face him, and found him watching her with anguish in his eyes. Once, in another lifetime, she had loved those eyes, and the man behind them. Before, before Mani, before Cotterdam, Harry had spent so much time watching her, and she had come to recognize the nuance of his every emotion, revealed to her in the warmth of his eyes, the way the little wrinkles at their corners would crinkle when she did something that made him smile, the way their color would darken almost to black when he wanted her, as he had done that night at Havensworth, even when she was pulling herself away from him. Now she looked in those eyes, and she saw the same grief, the same fear, the same longing that swirled within her own heart.
"I would have rather died myself than see any harm come to you," he breathed.
Ruth did begin to weep, then, for she had heard his words, and she knew them to be true. There was nothing Harry would not do for her sake, nothing except let her go.
"Ruth-" he started to say, no doubt intending to defend himself and the choices he had made, but Ruth was having none of it.
"You unbelievable bastard," she gasped.
He had been standing behind her, concern and doubt rolling off of him in waves so powerful that even through her own torrent of emotions she had been able to discern his discontent. When she spoke he let loose a short, gasping sort of laugh and stepped up beside her, his hands clasping the railing in a mirror image of her own, his eyes staring out across the water just as hers were doing, the pair of them so close and yet not touching, not looking at one another, unwilling and unable to cross the chasm he had just torn between them.
"Guilty, I suppose," he said.
Ruth wanted to hit him.
"You lied to me," she said again.
"Yes, Ruth, I lied. What do you want me to say? That I wish I hadn't done it?"
She turned to stare at him incredulously. I should leave, she thought in a sudden panic as it all became too much to bear, but she was wearing Harry's jumper and he reached for her anyway, his hand upon her arm turning her in towards him, drawing her closer, and though she knew she ought to tear herself away she found she could do no such thing. At his urging she took a step forward, until she was tilting her head back, facing him head on, now, and drowning in the waves of sorrow and hopelessness that came washing over her at the sight of him.
"Would that be so hard?" she asked him tartly, her heart smarting from the blow he'd delivered in revealing his betrayal, lashing out for she did not know what else to do. "Is it so impossible for the great Harry Pearce to admit he made a mistake?"
"It was the right call and I'd do it again in a heartbeat," he answered with such conviction that for the first time Ruth felt her own certainty begin to crumble, just a little.
"I could not have told you the truth, Ruth. I could not risk it. I had no way of knowing what might happen, and the less you knew, the less they could blame you when it all fell apart. I had to protect you."
"I don't need your protection," she said, but even as the words passed her lips she knew they were more wish than truth. Harry's eyes softened somewhat, though he did not release his grip upon her arm.
"Of course not," he said, and it was clear to her that he was only agreeing to humor her, to put an end to their disagreement. "But you have it, just the same. I love you, Ruth, and I will always do whatever I can to keep you safe. Whatever the cost."